Thrilling Thursday: Everything's Coming Up Roses

Well this might not thrill *you* necessarily, but I was awfully tickled...

Anyone who saw my yard over the last couple of years can tell you that it was awful. Like REALLY bad awful. I've spent the last 2 summers trying to beat the weeds into submission and had to finally call in the big guns (my neighbor) this year. He owns a landscaping business and has industrial-strength weed killer.

Now despite my devotion to better living through modern chemistry when it comes to my personal body, I really try to stay as "green" as possible. I take the bus in the summer (I'd do it in the winter, but The Kid must get to school), I recycle everything possible, I have an electric mower, I use natural cleaning stuff (except for bleaching my tub and the Magic Eraser - that thing is a miracle of modern science), etc. So trust me when I say that if it were a few dandelions in my grass I'd just yank em' or let them be - I'm not out to have an award-winning velvety lawn - but this was ridiculous. It was like the Day of the Triffids out there.


No, seriously, the first summer I lived in fear of my back yard.

But now? Now I have grass. GREEN grass. In MY yard! I'm so delighted by this that I can't even form full sentences when discussing it, apparently. I still have many bald spots and I need to get out there with some gloves and yank the stuff that's growing in the sidewalk cracks (WTF) and such, but it is *vastly* improved.

And? I have this:



This is in the corner, where a weed once grew, and I actually gasped when I saw it. I ran over and photographed it (poorly - thanks camera phone) and now I have proof in the form of one single, solitary, long-stem pink rose.

Bliss.

I could lie and say that this was due to careful tending by me, but we all know I have a black thumb...I even managed to kill a Hosta, and that's really really hard.

Of course now I have a big back yard full of lovely green grass and can't go back there because it's so effing hot... next year may finally be the year I build some kind of roof over the cement porch. It's on the list.